I have always been a fan of google maps, and I especially enjoy their street view. I often use it before traveling to an unfamiliar place so I can “see” the place I’m going, and get familiar with the landscape, etc.

Time Travel allows you to look at a particular place as it looked the last time the google-car passed by, and then lookback to see it as-it-was when the google-car passed by the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that …..

This is pretty darn cool!

I tried it on my own house, and I could see it as-it-was before the most recent paint job, and before Sandy took down the trees, and before we sold the last car…..

Google Time Travel isn’t available everywhere, but it does now exist for many areas. And, as the google-car keeps mapping, I assume the time-travel feature will expand.

To show you an example, I used the construction site at the World Trade Center area of Manhattan.

First you must navigate to the street view area of wherever you want to see. To do this, just pull the little orange guy onto a street as you look at the map. Poof! You will now be in “street view” mode.

Now look at the upper left hand corner of your computer screen to see if Time Travel is available. If it is, you will see this:

Just tap on this Time Travel option, and it will open to show you the dates available.

Here I will show you two screens, one from August 2013, and then the same view from April, 2009. There are also other options to select time in-between those dates.

Google Time Travel is available at most “famous” places around the world, but it is expanding. As I said, my own street is now covered for the last few years, which is proof that Time Travel is available in ordinary places.

Previously I shared with you one of my all time favorite podcasts, A Way With Words. I find the talk about language fascinating, and the conversation between the hosts and their callers keeps me hooked for the entire show …. each and every time.

Because I enjoy A Way With Words so much, when I recently learned of a language survey online, I was immediately drawn to it.

Linguists often find themselves the center of attention at parties when they demonstrate how they can pinpoint the area a person lives just by listening to the way a variety of words are pronounced.

Now, here comes the fun: 🙂 This online survey will do the same for you! Just answer 25 questions, and a map will be generated to show you where the language spoken is most like yours.

I completed the survey, along with a few family members, and it was quite accurate for each and every one of us. I’ve pasted my “result map” here. Although I currently live in Pennsylvania, I grew up in New Jersey and so I’m not surprised to see the skewing toward the Garden State.

The survey, a research project North Carolina State University, consists of 25 questions. Think about your answers, and try to answer as true to your speech as possible.

When you are done, you will be asked where where you live and where you grew up as a validity check for the researchers. You do not give your name or other identifiers. Just city and state. (apologies to readers outside the US for this US-only survey.)

So, this weekend, if you have a little time to kill, you might enjoy taking this survey, and learning how accurately they can pinpoint you.

I’m not a runner. Never was. Never will be. But I like to walk, and to my delight, this well-reviewed “Runner’s App” is also exceptionally wonderful for a casual walker like me.

Simply tap “start” to …yes… start the app. Put the iPhone in your pocket and walk on (or run, if you are so inclined).

5 minutes later, a robot voice will tell you that you have been walking (running) for 5 minutes, and let you know how far you have gone, and what your speed is.

(You can tinker with the settings and have this voice share your information at many other time intervals. 5 minutes is the default, and I find that to be just about perfect.)

When you are done walking/running, you stop the app and delight in all kinds of information. Your average speed, of course, and the total time, the date, etc… But the thing that I really love is the MAP that you generate with your walk/run, courtesy of the GPS in your phone.

Here is the map that this app generated for me as I ended a quick walk this morning. Notice that I was walking on park paths so you only see my walk against a background of blank space, but if I walked in the neighborhood, you would see each and every street that was strolled upon (or run on). I loved getting the one-mile notification on the map.🙂

Other features make this app even richer. For the average user, the free version is probably sufficient, but there are opportunities within the app to ramp up the features even further (freemium style). I will not be buying a thing. I’m happy just the way it is.